Sales Effectiveness
Sales effectiveness is often unseen and hidden by sales productivity and sales teams making sales in spite of what they are doing not because of what they are doing.
Salesforce effectiveness starts at the top. All too often, when we engage with a client the Sales Strategy is not well defined and usually what is defined has inherent conflict within the strategy.
This lack of straight line strategy causes for Sales Ineffectiveness. The strategy should dictate decisions when at a crossroad or under crisis. Of course when there is no strategy or ineffective strategy the decisions down line are impacted and slow progress towards the overall goal.
Sales management is often the scapegoat and the hero depending on the outcome of decisions made with undefined strategies and or strategies in conflict. The skills we look at for sales force effectiveness as it relates to sales management are also the pillars of Sales Management:
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Coaching
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Motivating
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Recruiting
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Accountability
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Growing the team
We also identify the effectiveness of these skills by looking at sales performance factors. For example, if you have a Sales Manager that has strong Accountability skills but the team continues to make excuses for lack of results and they lack follow-through and execution on your CRM and Pipeline management systems, the sales manager is not effective even though he/she has the skills.
For VP’s and Sales Directors we look at Sales Force Effectiveness in the above Sales Manager skills and we also examine their special skill sets below:
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Strategic Thinker
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Develops Strong Relationships
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Sales Leadership
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Sales Management Coaching
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Personal Self Image
For example, if the VP or Director skills are low in Motivation but the entire team is strong with personal desire and has a strong commitment and strong personal goals the team is Motivated in spite of the VP or Directors skills.
Worth repeating: Sales effectiveness is often unseen and hidden by sales productivity and sales teams making sales in spite of what they are doing not because of what they are doing.
Lack of sales effectiveness doesn’t often show up until there is a crisis, a downturn in sales, new competition or growth initiatives.